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Come Die with Me: foie-gras cruelty on Channel 4

Once again, Channel 4's popular show Come Dine with Me has featured foie-gras. Sadly, this only serves to popularise and promote a food stuff that would be illegal to produce in Britain and causes immense suffering to millions of birds.

Channel 4 has acknowledged that foie-gras is controversial, but actually instructs people how to cook with it via recipes on its website. Please contact them to ask they take an ethical decision to make it policy that foie-gras is not used on Channel 4 shows and is not promoted via their websites.

Use our suggested email below or write your own (contact details on the right).

“Dear Channel 4

I am very disappointed to see that foie-gras has once again been featured on Come Dine With Me.

Foie-gras is the grossly enlarged liver of a duck or goose and is essentially a disease, marketed as a delicacy. Birds raised for this 'gourmet' cruelty are force-fed enormous quantities of food through a long metal pipe, three times a day. This process of deliberate and painful overfeeding continues for up to a month by which time the birds' livers have swelled to ten times their normal size. Every year, around a million ducks die during this period of force-feeding.

Foie-gras is not produced in Britain, as the Government has made it clear that its production would contravene existing animal welfare regulations, but sadly it is still perfectly legal to import it.

Surely the programme makers vet what contestants are using, so it would presumably be easy to veto its use for ethical reasons. However, allowing it to be cooked and served on Come Dine with Me helps popularise foie-gras and can only drive the abject cruelty behind its production.

I am asking that the Channel 4 take the ethical decision to dump foie-gras from its programming.

Respond to Channel 4

Thank you to everyone who has written to Channel 4 and asked them to show some ethical backbone by banning foie-gras from show such as Come Dine with Me.

Those of you that have may have received back a response from them that goes little way towards addressing our concerns. Channel 4 are seemingly admitting that they have no ethical guidelines and have a whatever goes attitude towards boosting ratings.

Please take a moment to reply to them with our pre-prepared message and online form. Ask them to reconsider and show some ethical mettle by prohibiting the use of foie-gras on their future shows.

Use the form below to send this message - or compose your own:

"Dear Channel 4 Thank you for your response re my complaint about foie-gras being served on Come Dine with Me and featuring recipes containing it on your website.

However, as I'm sure you'd expect your answer does not address my concerns in the slightest. You say that contestants on the show are free to cook what they want without constraint or input from Channel 4. Am I to take from that that Channel 4 has no ethical guidelines at all? Would the station be happy for contestants to cook dog or cat?

To hide behind the fact that the sale of foie-gras is not illegal in the UK is hardly an excuse and certainly does not absolve you as far as ethics go. As has already been pointed out, the production of foie-gras causes such abject cruelty that its production is banned in Britain.

Far from ensuring a proper debate, a number of the shows featuring foie-gras have simply trivialised the suffering of millions of birds each year. To add insult to injury, the fact that the shows are repeated so often and the Channel 4 website hosts these recipes only strengthens the claim that you not only sanction this cruelty but actively promote it.

Channel 4 used to be world-renowned for forward thinking programming. Please show some ethical mettle and drop foie-gras.